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 York, on the 27th of May 1818. After her marriage in 1840 she established a periodical called The Lily, which had some success. In 1849 she took up the idea—previously originated by Mrs Elizabeth Smith Miller—of a reform in woman’s dress, and the wearing of a short skirt, with loose trousers, gathered round the ankles. The name of “bloomers” gradually became popularly attached to any divided-skirt or knickerbocker dress for women. Until her death on the 30th of December 1894 Mrs Bloomer took a prominent part in the temperance campaign and in that for woman’s suffrage.

BLOOMFIELD, MAURICE (1855– ), American Sanskrit scholar, was born on the 23rd of February 1855, in Bielitz, Austrian Silesia. He went to the United States in 1867, and ten years later graduated from Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina. He then studied Sanskrit at Yale, under W. D. Whitney, and at Johns Hopkins, to which university he returned as associate professor in 1881 after a stay of two years in Berlin and Leipzig, and soon afterwards was promoted professor of Sanskrit and comparative philology. His papers in the American Journal of Philology number a few in comparative linguistics, such as those on assimilation and adaptation in congeneric classes of words, and many valuable “Contributions to the Interpretation of the Vedas,” and he is best known as a student of the Vedas. He translated, for Max-Müller’s Sacred Books of the East, the Hymns of the Atharva-Veda (1897); contributed to the Bühler-Kielhorn Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde the section “The Atharva-Veda and the Gopatha Brahmana” (1899); was first to edit the Kauçika-Sūtra (1890), and in 1907 published, in the Harvard Oriental series, A Vedic Concordance. In 1905 he published Cerberus, the Dog of Hades, a study in comparative mythology.

 BLOOMFIELD, ROBERT (1766–1823), English poet, was born of humble parents at the village of Honington, Suffolk, on the 3rd of December 1766. He was apprenticed at the age of eleven to a farmer, but he was too small and frail for field labour, and four years later he came to London to work for a shoemaker. The poem that made his reputation, The Farmer’s Boy, was written in a garret in Bell Alley. The manuscript, declined by several publishers, fell into the hands of Capell Lofft, who arranged for its publication with woodcuts by Bewick in 1800. The success of the poem was remarkable, over 25,000 copies being sold in the next two years. His reputation was increased by the appearance of his Rural Tales (1802), News from the Farm (1804), Wild Flowers (1806) and The Banks of the Wye (1811). Influential friends attempted to provide for Bloomfield, but ill-health and possibly faults of temperament prevented the success of these efforts, and the poet died in poverty at Shefford, Bedfordshire, on the 19th of August 1823. His Remains in Poetry and Verse appeared in 1824.

 BLOOMFIELD, a town of Essex county, New Jersey, U.S.A., about 12 m. W. of New York, and directly adjoining the city of Newark on the N. Pop. (1900) 9668, of whom 2267 were foreign-born; (1905, state census) 11,668; (1910), 15,070. Area, 5.42 sq. m. Bloomfield is served by the Erie, and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railways, and by several electric lines connecting with Newark, Montclair, Orange, East Orange and other neighbouring places. It is a residential suburb of Newark and New York, is the seat of a German theological school (Presbyterian, 1869) and has the Jarvie Memorial library (1902). There is a Central Green, and in 1908 land was acquired for another park. Among the town’s manufactures are silk and woollen goods, paper, electric elevators, electric lamps, rubber goods, safety pins, hats, cream separators, brushes and novelties. The value of the town’s factory products increased from $3,370,924 in 1900 to $4,645,483 in 1905, or 37.8%. First settled about 1670–1675 by the Dutch and by New Englanders from the Newark colony, Bloomfield was long a part of Newark, the principal settlement at first being known as Wardsesson. In 1796 it was named Bloomfield in honour of General Joseph Bloomfield (1753–1823), who served (1775–1778) in the War of American Independence, reaching the rank of major, was governor of New Jersey in 1801–1802 and 1803–1812, brigadier-general in the United States army during the War of 1812, and a Democratic representative in Congress from 1817 to 1821. The township of Bloomfield was incorporated in 1812. From it were subsequently set off Belleville (1839), Montclair (1868) and Glen Ridge (1895).

 BLOOMINGTON, a city and the county-seat of McLean county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the central part of the state, about 125 m. S.W. of Chicago. Pop. (1890) 20,484; (1900) 23,286, of whom 3611 were foreign-born, there being a large German element; (1910 census) 25,768. The city is served by the Chicago & Alton, the Illinois Central, the Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati & St Louis, and the Lake Erie & Western railways, and by electric inter-urban lines. Bloomington is the seat of the Illinois Wesleyan University (Methodist Episcopal, co-educational, founded in 1850), which comprises a college of liberal arts, an academy, a college of law, a college of music and a school of oratory, and in 1907 had 1350 students. In the town of (pop. in 1900, 3795), 2 m. north of Bloomington, are the Illinois State Normal University (opened at Bloomington in 1857 and removed to its present site in 1860), one of the first normal schools in the Middle West, and the state soldiers’ orphans’ home (1869). Bloomington has a public library, and Franklin and Miller parks; among its principal buildings are the court house, built of marble, and the Y.M.C.A. building. Among the manufacturing establishments are foundries and machine shops, including the large shops of the Chicago & Alton railway, slaughtering and meat-packing establishments, flour and grist mills, printing and publishing establishments, a caramel factory and lumber factories. The value of the city’s factory products increased from $3,011,899 in 1900 to $5,777,000 in 1905, or 91.8%. There are valuable coal mines in and near the city, and the city is situated in a fine farming region. Bloomington derives its name from Blooming Grove, a small forest which was crossed by the trails leading from the Galena lead mines to Southern Illinois, from Lake Michigan to St Louis, and from the Eastern to the far Western states. The first settlement was made in 1822, but the town was not formally founded until 1831, when it became the county-seat of McLean county. The first city charter was obtained in 1850, and in 1857 the public school system was established. In 1856 Bloomington was the meeting place of a state convention called by the Illinois editors who were opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (see ). This was the first convention of the Republican party in Illinois; among the delegates were Abraham Lincoln, Richard Yates, John M. Palmer and Owen Lovejoy. The city has been the residence of a number of prominent men, including David Davis (1815–1886), an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court in 1862–1877, a member of the United States Senate in 1877–1883, and president pro tempore of the Senate in 1881–1883; Governor John M. Hamilton (1847–1905), Governor Joseph W. Fifer (b. 1840); and Adlai Ewing Stevenson (b. 1835), a Democratic representative in Congress in 1875–1877 and 1879–1881, and vice-president of the United States in 1893–1897. Bloomington’s prosperity increased after 1867, when coal was first successfully mined in the vicinity.

In the Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society for 1905 may be found a paper, “The Bloomington Convention of 1856 and Those Who Participated in it.”

 BLOOMINGTON, a city and the county-seat of Monroe county, Indiana, U.S.A., about 45 m. S. by W. of Indianapolis. Pop. (1890) 4018; (1900) 6460, including 396 negroes; (1910) 8838. It is served by the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville and the Indianapolis Southern (Illinois Central) railways. Bloomington is the seat of the Indiana University (co-educational since 1868), established as a state seminary in 1820, and as Indiana College in 1828, and chartered as the State university in 1838; in 1907–1908 it had 80 instructors, 2051 students, and a library of 65,000 volumes; its school of law was established in 1842, suspended in 1877 and re-established in 1889; its school of medicine was established in 1903; but most of the medical course is given in Indianapolis; a graduate school was organized in 1904; and a summer school (or summer term of eleven weeks) was first 